On Charges Of Cheerfulness, He's Nowhere Near Guilty

If you write things for newspapers, people write things to you, occasionally starting out ''Dear Meathead.''

A sensitive soul might interpret this as criticism. However, most of us become hardened to expressions of opinion. One of the cornerstones of our free society is a reader's right to be terribly wrong.

Still, some letters can sting, such as one from Dr. William Link.

He writes: ''From time to time I have found it necessary to take you to task for some of the ideas expressed in your column. This time, however, it is your attitude to which I take exception. Lately, I have detected an undercurrent of cheerfulness and optimism, which I believe to be unwarranted.''

He proceeds to expand on the malicious indictment.

Not only does this hurt, but it's a personal attack on all that I've stood for. Unwarranted cheerfulness and optimism, indeed! I've always considered myself as being to gloom what Typhoid Mary was to contagious disease: a carrier.

As one who will not greet his 65th birthday again, I look around and am filled by despair, interrupted only by an occasional burst of melancholy. I've been an enthusiastic advocate of the theory that we're going to Hades in a handbasket, that they don't make them like they used to, and that there's nothing as good as the good old days.

I've deplored the decline of morals, the rise of inflation and the deterioration of the native language and major-league baseball. I've said nothing is half as much fun as it used to be and that it costs four times more. I've been among the first observers to note when American motorists descended into idiocy. And possibly the first to mention the decline of domestic animals, especially dogs.

My attitude was encapsulated by Burt Lancaster in the movie Atlantic City when, walking with a young companion on the famous boardwalk, he lauded the magnificence of the ocean but said, as I recall, ''You should have seen the way it used to be.''

Even in the foolishness of youth, I couldn't have been charged with unwarranted cheerfulness. I remember working with a man who came in daily at 6 a.m. whistling the ''Colonel Bogey March'' and I entertained thoughts about assaulting him. I've never much believed in conversation, civil or otherwise, before noon.

I asked my wife of 43 years if it was fair for this man to charge me with cheerfulness and optimism.

''Absolutely not,'' she said loyally. ''You're one of the sourpusses of the century.''